A Decision Support System for Undecided and Exploratory Students

Choosing a major can be a difficult choice for undeclared students, depending on personal interests, job markets, program costs, and the complexity of graduation requirements. The current procedure for exploring possible majors/minors involves a tedious and time-consuming exploration of static data presented in a convoluted format. This work considers the complexity of degree requirements and presents the design and implementation of an efficient decision support system (DSS) for exploring majors and/or minors. The DSS presents a tool that enables college students to map their already completed courses to degree requirements and then view the majors/minors that yield the shortest path for graduation. Secondly, the DSS system provides data visualization tools to assist students in selecting courses that satisfy the remaining requirements of a selected major/minor.

Early Declaration of a College Major and Its Relationship to Persistence

As college completion rates are a top priority for institutions and other stakeholders, understanding college student persistence is important. Some perceive students making an early decision about a major as necessary for success in college, arguing that enrolling as undeclared contributes to student attrition. Previous research about undeclared students and persistence, however, is limited, conflicting, and dated. For this longitudinal study, logistic regression analyses were conducted using institutional records for 4,489 first-time in college, full-time enrolled students from the Fall 2010 cohort at a large research university in the Western United States. The results show no difference in persistence between students who matriculate as declared versus undeclared majors, which has implications for advising practice.

Using Student Drawings to Understand the First-Year Experience

This article reports on an exploratory study that investigated the use of student drawings as a visual research method to understand the first-year experience. A total of 31 undeclared students enrolled in a first-year seminar participated in the study. Data generated from pre- and postdrawings of students’ first semester paths were analyzed to identify emergent themes and understand experience at the group and individual levels. Findings provide novel insights about the first-year experience from the student’s perspective. These new understandings have important implications that may help institutions shape and strengthen retention efforts at the student, classroom, and program levels.